Whether you are counting down the last days of school or have already started your summer break, we hope your summertime plans involve a good book.

We’ve asked a number of college admission deans and high school counselors for their summer reading suggestions. What follows is a sampling of their recommendations. Some are specific to college admission, and others are just great reads.

Here is a small sampling of college admissions books — and there are many — that might be useful to readers of The Choice this summer. Feel free to find more reads in our Book Report, and to add your recommendations in the comment box below.

Every year, when it comes time for yet another group of high school students to begin thinking about colleges, an enormous amount of attention is paid to the nation’s most elite schools. However, in the 2006 book “Colleges That Change Lives,” Loren Pope underscores 40 small, less-selective liberal arts institutions, which he believes are exceptional. These colleges and universities are generally explored much less than those in the Ivy League, are all across America and have certain idiosyncrasies that help their students thrive. It is clear that the institutions outlined in Mr. Pope’s book — including Guilford College, Reed College and Clark University — actually want you. Read more…

When Wake Forest University announced three years ago that it would make the SAT optional for its undergraduate applicants, among those cheering was Joseph Soares, a sociology professor at the university. Mr. Soares has channeled his enthusiasm for Wake Forest’s decision — as well as for similar policies at several hundred other colleges — into a new book, “SAT Wars,” that argues for looking beyond standardized test scores in college admissions. (The book was published last month by Teachers College Press.)

“The SAT and ACT are fundamentally discriminatory,” Mr. Soares said in a phone interview last week.

Through his own essays in the book, as well as those of contributors that he edited, Mr. Soares seeks to build a case against the SAT. He characterizes it as a test that tends to favor white, male, upper income students with the means to prepare for it.

Chang Young Chung, a statistical programmer, and Thomas J. Espenshade, a sociology professor, both at Princeton University, co-authored one chapter in which they cite a study that examined national SAT data from the late 1990s. That study broke applicants into three socio-economic classes. They found that 29 percent of students from the highest social class scored above 1400 on the SAT, compared to 24 percent of middle class students and 14 percent of lower class students. Turning that pyramid on its head, the study found that those students from lower social classes were more likely to have earned a top high school G.P.A.

In seeking academically engaged students, Mr. Soares said in an interview with The Choice, colleges should pay more attention to high school grades and give less credence to standardized test scores.Read more…

The Choice has taken a close look at two recently published college admissions books, each with especially catchy titles. One, “Don’t Stalk the Admissions Officer,” is intended for applicants; the other, “I’m Going to College — Not You!” is for parents.

“Don’t Stalk the Admissions Officer” (Ten Speed Press, 2010) by Risa Lewak, who describes herself as a former “pre-admissions counselor” and recruiter for Hunter College, is a tongue-in-cheek “survival guide” aimed at high school students. While the book purports to be a practical how-to companion, it’s more satire than substance.

It’s a book with a distinct brand of humor — sarcastic, cynical and highly irreverent — and, if it doesn’t alienate its reader, it’s more likely to “restore sanity” by way of incredulous laughter than actual preparedness.

The book is broken into three parts:

Part One: “Enjoy High School Now, Avoid Therapy Later,” playfully asserts that “Overachiever and Loser Have the Same Latin Root.”

Applying to college can feel downright novelistic, with its stress and suspense catapulting some families into faraway fantasy worlds and alternate frames of mind.

Karen Stabiner, an author with a typically nonfiction take on parenting and education (she writes a column called The College Insider for The Huffington Post), has drawn inspiration from an admissions system rife with creative material. Her latest book, “Getting In,” (Hyperion, March 2010) is a work of fiction that chronicles the senior year strife of five high school students as they file college applications, confront rejection and acceptance, and prepare to leave home.

The novel’s greatest strength is its greatest downfall: it’s too real. “Getting In” captures student and parent stress well – too well to make it an escapist, light read. At the same time, its characters lack the depth and likability to endear them to the reader and inspire much other than resentment for having absorbed their fictional anxieties and borne witness to neurotic what-ifs.

The question is, once you or a child has jumped the collegiate gatepost, do you want to relive the associated angst? And if you’re in the midst of applying, or are anticipating the process, do you want to expose yourself to a powerful strain of the virus? (Maybe you do.) Read more…

“Admission Matters,” by Sally P. Springer, Jon Reider and Marion R. Franck is a direct and human companion to the college admissions process.

The second edition of the book, which was recently published, is by no means revelatory, but it is thorough and psychologically sensitive, making it a good read for the overwhelmed or under-prepared student.

The authors seek to minimize the hype surrounding the admissions process. They spend a lot of time describing the intensity of competition today and the fallacy of associating the quality of a school’s education with its selectivity.

There is a nurturing, humanistic emphasis on “good-fit” colleges. Read more…

At its top levels, the American system of higher education may be the best in the world. Yet in terms of its core mission — turning teenagers into educated college graduates — much of the system is simply failing.

The United States does a good job enrolling teenagers in college, but only half of students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree. Among rich countries, only Italy is worse. That’s a big reason inequality has soared, and productivity growth has slowed. Economic growth in this decade was on pace to be slower than in any decade since World War II — even before the financial crisis started.

He continues, though, on a note of surprising optimism:

For all the book’s alarming statistics, its message is ultimately uplifting — or at least invigorating.

Yes, inadequate precollege education is a problem. But high schools still produce many students who have the skills to complete college and yet fail to do so. Turning them into college graduates should be a lot less difficult than fixing all of American education.

Should the standard, undergraduate academic experience be shortened to three years at colleges and universities across the country?

Robert Zemsky, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, raises this provocative question deep in his forthcoming book, “Making Reform Work: The Case for Transforming American Higher Education” (Rutgers). Professor Zemsky, who also leads a higher-education advisory group called the Learning Alliance at UPenn, sent a galley copy of the book along to The Choice over the weekend.

In the book, which will be released on Sept. 10 but can be pre-ordered now, he calls for “a dislodging event of sufficient magnitude that it breaks the gridlock that now holds attempts to reform higher education hostage.” One such event, he argues, would be a “process of reform” that “concluded that the standard undergraduate degree in the United States, as in Europe, should be a three-year baccalaureate.” As Mr. Zemsky puts it:

With more and more Americans pursuing advanced degrees, it makes sense to look for ways to shorten the undergraduate portion of their post-secondary educations. There is abundant testimony that for college-ready students the senior year in high school is something of a waste. More of that year’s curriculum could be devoted to acquiring advanced college-ready skills in a foreign language, composition, and mathematics, in particular, so that students are ready for more advanced work in their first year of college. Though the community colleges will see themselves as threatened, a nationally adopted three-year baccalaureate degree could well prove to be a boon to them by clearly identifying and funding them as the places where students go to complete their precollegiate education.

Community colleges could continue to provide the first year of collegiate instruction for students of limited means as well as students seeking a low-risk higher education portal. Finally, provided the four-year curriculum was actually pared to three years, an undergraduate education would see an immediate 25-percent reduction in cost.